Clarke takes over as UK's Home Secretary
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-12-16 17:05

UK's former Education Secretary Charles Clarke has been installed as the new Home Secretary in a swift reshuffle of the Labour cabinet following David Blunkett's emotional resignation.

Blunkett, blind since birth and a key Blair ally, resigned his post on Wednesday after weeks of lurid newspaper stories about his affair with a married woman, his paternity claims over her son and allegations he abused his office to help her nanny get a visa.

Charles Clarke listens to questions during a fringe meeting at the Labour Party conference in Brighton in a September 2004 file photo. Former Education Secretary Clarke has been installed as the new Home Secretary in a swift reshuffle of the Labour cabinet following David Blunkett's emotional resignation. [Reuters]

Newspapers and analysts said on Thursday the timing was a setback for Labour, elected in a 1997 landslide on promises of a squeaky clean government. The party is poised to contest a third term in an election expected next May.

"The loss of one senior minister does not herald a political winter," the Times newspaper wrote in an editorial on Thursday. "But there is a chill in Downing Street."

Blair biographer Philip Stephens said it was "a very significant blow to Blair to lose a minister who shared all his instincts on law and order".

Others were more sanguine about the effect on Blair, who is ahead of the opposition Conservatives in the polls. The Tories were resoundingly thrashed in the 1997 elections after years of so-called sleaze scandals while in office.

Britain's David Blunkett leaves his home following his resignation as Home Secretary in London,  December 15, 2004. [Reuters]

"Mr Blair has extraordinary resilience and politics will soon move on," the Independent newspaper's Steve Richards wrote.

Blunkett, who became Home Secretary three months before the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, was the pivotal figure behind Britain's response to the threat of attack.

His tough stance angered some civil rights groups, who campaigned against his decision to detain terrorism suspects without trial.

As the new Home Secretary, Clarke must quickly master a packed law and order brief and a raft of anti-terrorism policies that form a central plank of Blair's reelection agenda.

Considered a safe cabinet heavyweight, Clarke was in turn replaced at education by high-flier Ruth Kelly, known for her strong showing as a minister at the Treasury Department.

The 57-year-old Blunkett, often pictured with his guide dog, resigned from his post after weeks of accusations he abused his position to speed up a visa for the Filipina nanny of his married former lover, U.S.-born publisher Kimberly Quinn.

An inquiry into that charge was to report within days but Blunkett pre-empted it, saying he had inadvertently accelerated the visa by writing a letter that highlighted general delays.

His voice cracking and with tears in his eyes, Blunkett said the last few weeks had been the worst of his life. "I've taken more stress than any politician should," he said on television.

While the Daily Mail sympathised on its front page with "The Man Who Loved Too Much" and called for his return to public life, others were less forgiving.

Former deputy Labour Party leader Roy Hattersley said Blunkett was "arrogant" and hastened his downfall by criticising senior colleagues in comments revealed by his biographer.

"Politicians in trouble need friends," he wrote in the Guardian newspaper. "And Mr Blunkett - certain of his own moral superiority - thought he was strong enough to stand on his own."

The headline of the Sun newspaper screamed that Blunkett was "Destroyed by the woman he loved" as the headline to a story which said the Home Secretary's former lover had "wrecked his career" as revenge for the legal wrangle over her two-year-old son.

The Daily Mirror ran the banner "The Price of Love" and the Daily Star said: "Blunko Sunko", while the left-leaning Guardian talked of Blunkett's emotional exit and the establishment newspaper The Times pronounced it the: "End of the affair".

The BBC reported that Mr Blunkett suggested to it that he had been willing to sacrifice his political career to pursue his paternity claim to Mrs Quinn's son. A claim which has been brought to the courts and dragged through the press.

"He will want to know not just that his father actually cared enough about him to sacrifice his career, but he will want to know, I hope, that his mother has some regret," the BBC reported him as saying.

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